The Yankee Hater: evolution gone awry

With 23 and soon to be 24 World Series championships and 35 American League pennants, the New York Yankees are clearly the most successful and well-known professional sports franchise in history. Most fans are proud of the glory of the Yankee legends--American icons including the Babe, Joltin' Joe and the Iron Horse.

But the Yankee Hater is an enigmatic breed; one can rarely follow his or her reasoning. The Yankee Hater is customarily guided by an irrational blind rage--an incessant inner gnawing, a persistent desire to rob the Bronx Bombers and their fans of the dignity and excellence they earn year after year.

Yankee Hater Exhibit A: the Broadway musical Damn Yankees. A miserable fan sells his soul to the devil in order to be transformed into baseball superhero Joe Hardy, who then carries the hapless Washington Senators past the powerful Yanks. Hardy--the quintessential Yankee Hater--is willing to sacrifice his very soul to beat the team that never loses. Supernatural intervention is the poor Yankee Hater's only recourse. If real life were like musical theater, as alarming a thought as that might be, who knows how many Mets and Red Sox fans might exchange their very essences for just one more World Series championship. This may seem to be an outlandish speculation, but once one has become acquainted with a true Yankee Hater, one begins to discover the explosive combination of frustration, desperation, and resentment rising to the surface of this animal.

If the Yankee Hater can be classified into distinct species, the Met Fan/Yankee Hater combination seems to be the most vicious of all, with the Red Sox Fan/Yankee Hater beast coming in a close second.

Yankee Hater Exhibit B: The Met Fan. As the hotly-contested 1998 National League Wild Card race began to wind down, I saw one of my friends of the Met Fan/Yankee Hater species arrive at a volatile crossroads. I should have known better. I should have kept my distance from him. Yet, as one who had been assured of my team's playoff spot since early August, I couldn't resist a simple jibe.

"So...you guys lost tonight, huh?" I ventured. Given, there was a definite measure of sarcasm in my voice. But my comment was moderate enough, and certainly within the realm of acceptable sports banter.

Ah, but I had committed a potentially fatal error--I had underestimated the unpredictable, bestial nature of the Yankee Hater. Before I could say "Vince Coleman," I was thrown from my feet and tackled by said Met Fan/Yankee Hater (whose identity shall remain concealed to preserve what shreds of dignity he still retains). I landed on the floor in a chokehold, staring into the crazed eyes and near-foaming mouth of this violent creature. I was aghast at the anguish I saw spiraling out of control in his visage. Perhaps, I surmised, the average Yankee Hater's ferocity has begun to intensify in the wake of the Bombers' glorious, record-breaking 1998 season.

Yankee Hater Exhibit C: my friend, Chris, a die-hard Boston Red Sox fan. His Sox hat seems almost glued to his scalp--I'm not sure if I've ever seen him not wearing it. Again, I use his first name only to save him from the embarrassment of being a fan of a team in the midst of an 80-year World Series drought. As is their custom, the Sox lost to the Cleveland Indians in the first round of this year's playoffs; after another impressive regular season, Boston just simply couldn't put it together in October.

Chris was understandably upset. Yet, the other night, I did a double take when I saw him wearing an Indians jersey at a party. Not only was Chris emblazoned with the logo of the team that eliminated his beloved Red Sox, he was appearing so publicly and proudly. What could the reason for this inscrutable animal behavior have been? Ah, but Chris is a Yankee Hater, through and through, and cared not whether he was supporting the team that caused him heartache just a week earlier. One thought festered in his savage brain: "Must beat Yankees. Yankees must lose."

At the conclusion of game five of the American League Championship Series which the Bombers won 5-3, Yankee ace David Wells was being taunted by various Yankee Haters at Cleveland's Jacobs Field. In response, the victorious Wells, a burly biker-type notorious for his bluntness, shouted, "To all those idiots out there, this one's for you." I realize that by saying this, I run the risk of being ferociously attacked, but nevertheless: until you have your own pennant winners, dear Yankee Haters, your bark simply has no bite.

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